Stars of the Night: The Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport. Caren Stelson. Illustrated by Selina Alko. 2023. [February] 40 pages. [Source: Library]
First sentence: When we were seven or eight or nine or ten, our home was the old city of Prague. In the summer when the sun lit up the sky, our mothers brought us to the city parks. We counted the boats on the river and had picnics of dark bread with cheese and slices of our mothers' sweet honey cake.
Premise/plot: Nonfiction picture book for older readers. (Mid-to-upper elementary grades). Narrative nonfiction--history--set around the Second World War. This picture book is unusual/unique in that it is told in first person plural; it is a collective story; it uses we and our pronouns. The book tells of the kindertransport--a mission to rescue Jewish kids and get them OUT of Nazi-occupied countries. (In this case, Czechoslovakia).
My thoughts: I'd read a book for an adult audience on this subject matter. I'd watched a documentary as well. I was fairly familiar with the subject. This is such an emotional story. But I don't mean that it has added melodrama or theatrics to history. The plain, bare facts are enough to break your heart as you read. I think the collective "we/our" works with this one. I don't want to say it "makes" it personal or more personal. But I think it helps with empathy.
There are not that many picture books about the Holocaust and the Second World War. There are a handful for sure. But not hundreds. (I can think of several starring Anne Frank. It is always refreshing to see a book that doesn't limit the story to being just Anne's story.) There are so many voices, so many stories--each one deserving of being heard.
© 2023 Becky Laney of Young Readers
